Census geometry: changing projection results in "inf, inf, inf, inf..."

Question

Newbie question here...

I am trying to make a map of Census data using the geometry shapefiles they provide (via NHGIS).

Here is what the geometry column looks like:

When I make a simple maptlotlib map using this code:

# make a map from final_gdf

# import the colors library (again)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.colors as colors

# Define the colors for the minimum and maximum values, these are set here to light gray and bright blue
min_color = '#E2E3E4'
max_color = '#0BB4FF'

# Create a colormap and plot the values in column AQP6001

cmap = colors.LinearSegmentedColormap.from_list("", [min_color, max_color])

# Create the map, using aspect = 1 to ensure the map is not distorted

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)
final_gdf.plot(column='AQP6E001', ax=ax, legend=True, cmap=cmap, aspect=1, vmin=50000, vmax=150000)

plt.show()

it looks great:

I want to add a simple basemap to show geographic boundaries, etc. I know the geometry must be in 3857 format in order to add a basemap (right?), but is currently in 4326:

final_gdf.crs

<Geographic 2D CRS: EPSG:4326> Name: WGS 84 Axis Info [ellipsoidal]:

• Lat[north]: Geodetic latitude (degree)
• Lon[east]: Geodetic longitude (degree) Area of Use:
• name: World.
• bounds: (-180.0, -90.0, 180.0, 90.0) Datum: World Geodetic System 1984 ensemble
• Ellipsoid: WGS 84
• Prime Meridian: Greenwich

But when I convert the data to crs 3857, the geometry data turns into POLYGON ((inf inf, inf inf, inf inf, inf inf, ...

The code I am using for the conversion is:

final_gdf_3857 = final_gdf.to_crs(epsg=3857) I've also tried this below:

final_gdf_3857 = gpd.GeoDataFrame(final_gdf_nyc, geometry='geometry', crs='EPSG:3857')

This second method results in no change to the geometry column (ie, they are still the original coordinates), and unsurprisingly results in a pretty nonsensical basemap, with none of the correct geographic features:

ax2 = final_gdf_3857.plot(figsize=(10, 10), alpha=0.5, edgecolor="k") cx.add_basemap(ax, zoom=10)

Clearly, the conversion from 4326 to 3857 is not working correctly. Any ideas?